Part of the "Maneater Film Series," Blood Monkey is a terrifying thriller that follows six American grad students stranded in a jungle and left as prey to a remote tribe of killer chimpanzees. When Dani, Amy, Greg, Sydney... more &raquo, Josh, and Seth arrive in Africa to study apes, they are quickly assured by renowned Professor Hamilton (Oscar winner F. Murray Abraham, Amadeus) that this is a one-of-a-kind opportunity to witness a new species. But what begins as an historic revelation about animal instinct soon becomes an experiment in human nature when the wilds of Africa turn positively vicious. Now available for the first time on DVD, Blood Monkey delivers horrifying screams, gruesome deaths, and suspenseful chases that makes The Blair Witch Project look like, well, just a walk in the woods.&laquo less

Movie Reviews

Not as bad as I'd hoped.

Bucky Underbelly | New Brunswick, NJ | 12/30/2007

(1 out of 5 stars)

"Okay, I admit it. I love bad movies. I mean train-wreck bad. I mean train-wreck-crashing-through-a-kindergarten-class-of-orphans bad. After many years of Mystery Science Theater 3000 fandom, I've simply developed a taste for cinematic ineptitude. It's a real hoot.

But sadly, despite the promisingly silly title, Blood Monkey was a big let down. Was it bad? Well, duh! It's called Blood Monkey, for godsakes! Of course it's bad! What did you expect? But was it fun-bad? Sadly, no. It wasn't a spectacular disaster in the way I was hoping. It was merely lame.

To the filmmakers' credit, things could have been A LOT worse. I've seen MUCH worse from the good folks over on the Sci-Fi Channel. (S.S. Doomtrooper, anyone? Sweet Lord a'mighty, THAT one will leave a mark!)

Clearly this movie was shot for about eleven dollars (ten of which, I'm sure went straight into the pocket of the perpetually slumming Mr. Abraham), but surprisingly the location work is actually pretty good. Unlike most movies of this ilk, this wasn't shot in some abandoned warehouse in Bulgaria. The rainforest locations used here are actually pretty stunning.

The acting, on the other hand ... well, it's about as godawful as you'd expect. Made all the worse because Abraham actually seems to be putting a little effort into it. Not that he's going to win any awards, but his baseline competence makes the amateur-porn-level "performances" of the kids stand out in even starker relief.

And yes, for a movie entitled "Blood Monkey," there's precious little actual monkey in it. Mercifully, we only get about 12 frames of terrible CG gorilla in the closing nanoseconds of the film. Which, in many ways, is smart, I suppose. If all you've got is an awful CG gorilla, it's best not to show it very much. However, if you're like me, the more bad CG gorilla they show, the funnier the movie could be. So, for me, I definitely mourned the lack of monkey.

The upshot is, if you're in the market for a good, scary movie ... then what the hell are you doing on the Blood Monkey page!? You should know better! Have you no sense at all, man?

But if you're looking for an unintentionally hilarious campy movie that you can roundly mock with your friends ... well, this isn't it either. It's too incompetent to be good ... but it's too competent to be fun.

Although there is one unintentionally hilarious scene where a troop of unseen Blood Monkeys in the canopy rain urine down upon the campsite of our hapless heroes below. Clearly they must have access to tanker trucks full of Mountain Dew in the middle of the rainforest because the fire-hose-like strength and volume of the Blood Monkey urinary stream is quite something to behold!

Though, sadly, one scene of researchers being peed on by murderous, blood-thirsty gorillas is just not enough for me to recommend this film."

I Have A Question....

The JuRK | Our Vast, Cultural Desert | 03/01/2009

(1 out of 5 stars)

"It is unfathomable that the makers behind this dreck believed they were making a good movie. You can't blame the production values. Everything was in focus. They shot it in the jungles of Thailand. They got an Academy Award Winning Actor to be in it.

Now I'm assuming that the people responsible for this are from my generation. Kids who grew up watching so-bad-they're-good drive-in B-movies that are still worth watching. You know, like the original 1980 HUMANOIDS FROM THE DEEP where mutant salmon (who look suspiciously like the ALIEN from the year before) who rape hot young coeds during their spawning cycle. Hilarious. If they're younger, they had "Mystery Science Theatre 3000."

So my question is:

How can the filmmakers make such a pedestrian, humorless, empty horror film? No wit, no momentum...no fun. The acting is bad. The writing is stunningly bland. No pay off of any kind.

Like most of the reviewers here, I'm sure, we watched this slop on the Sci-Fi Channel. I can't imagine anyone who would buy it. Maybe if there was some nudity--which at least made those terrible 70s drive-in movies at least watchable. Nudity never redeemed a bad horror movie but at least you could say, "Well, that was terrible...but that one chick was smokin' hot."

As the movie closed in on its climax, I kept looking at the clock and thinking that the Blood Monkeys better show up pretty soon. They do. For about six seconds. The End. You will feel totally cheated.

This is just Bad Bad. Not Good Bad."

It's Sad When A Movie Makes CONGO Look Good!

Stanley Runk | Camp North Pines | 08/24/2008

(2 out of 5 stars)

"A movie with a snappy title like Blood Monkey just cries out to be watched, but the title is all it's really got going for it. In fact, even the title is a lie-It's a friggin' ape, not a monkey!!Some anthropology students are lured into the jungle by anthropologist F. Murray Abraham, only to find out they're on the menu for a "new species" Abraham has discovered. It's a giant ape(or is it a whole tribe of apes? The movie never seems too clear on that point, but we assume it's only one ape) thought to be the "missing link".What the makers of this film seemed to forget is that when you're making a creature feature, people wanna see the damn creature!! They don't wanna see a bunch of irritating pinheads stumbling around the jungle for an hour. And even when you do see the ape in very brief flashes, it's a very lousy looking CGI creation that makes the original King Kong(or Son of Kong for that matter....or hell, even The Mighty Gorga!) look terrifying.The group of victims are the standard stereotypes. You got the intelligent types(they all have foreign accents, that's how we know they're intelligent), a horny jock type jerk, the hot blond worrying about her makeup, and of course the silent hero type. You're actually supposed to believe that these are anthropology students.While the scenery was nice, and the story wouldn't necessarily be considered boring or uninteresting, there is a surprising lack of Blood Monkeying around, minimal gore(though some of it decent looking), irritating characters(even poor Abraham isn't given enough of a villain role to work with. He could have at least been a big scenery chewer), and an awful looking and barely seen "monster".This is a chapter in the "Maneater Series" that you can skip guilt-free."

The INVINSIBLE monkey

V. K. Manglaveras | thessaloniki, greece | 07/07/2008

(1 out of 5 stars)

"I will not make any other comments about how auful this movie was but i only will ask this. Anybody seen the...MONKEY ? Did u see the monkey ? Did u mam ? Did u thomas ? And u...PETER ? Errr...Where the F13 hell was the monkey ?

PS.

I think i will go buy a pair of...glasses. I'm getting old and i'm starting not seeing INVINSIBLE BLOOD S$IT MONKEYS...AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH"

This monkey's definitely not going to heaven..........

Alasdair Loch | Scotland | 07/07/2008

(1 out of 5 stars)

"
Chimpanzees are apes not monkeys but I suppose that's a moot point when you've just made one of the worst films in history and you're looking for a catchy title to hang the whole thing on.